Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 11/21/2011 at 1:22 PM News

The Popdust Files: viral videos

Rich Juzwiak of fourfour, last seen on these pages for a marathon Mariah Carey HSN supercut (watch it in full here), has a new video illustrating another phenomenon of pop repetition. This one:

Not to incite a stan war or anything (HAHA, I WOULD LOVE THAT), but the practice of female singers being asked to comment on their peers (or taking it upon themselves to do so) is endlessly fascinating.

Indeed–Rihanna might talk about one big happy female-popstar wolfpack, and everyone can guest on everyone else’s track for mutual chart benefit, but there’s still this aura of competition and divas pitted against divas and dueling stan-power that you just don’t see with male artists. It’s pop as a game of Risk, a zero-sum game: every Katy Perry single is apparently actively taking territory from Lady Gaga, or from Rihanna, and so forth. It happens all the time, and it’s not new at all.

But don’t take our word for it. Watch this supercut, which is almost 10 minutes of divas talking about divas talking about divas, each clip connected to the previous one. Don’t all those interview questions sound so similar?